We Found the Most Creative, Chatty, Friendly Supermarkets in the UK

There’s a war in the UK that makes many people happy. It’s a pricing war where the top supermarkets are fighting each other fiercely.

The Big 4 supermarkets, Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons, are struggling. Their sales are falling due to the pricing war with discount chains like Aldi and Lidl, which spend big money on marketing. Aldi and Lidl spend more on marketing than the rest of the industry, trying to get the attention of the customers no matter what.

When we saw that move we thought about taking a deeper look at the social activity of all rivals and see what’s hiding behind the budgets. After all, in an attention-war like this, effective social strategy is part of the survival kit.

Who gets the most Likes and Retweets?

Aldi’s achievement is even greater than first seen when you take into account their audience size. Aldi’s followers on social is about 1.4m people, while Asda has the biggest audience among all supermarkets – 2m followers on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

How does Aldi get so much engagement?

Their secret sauce is pretty simple: gifts.

With encouraging their audience to Like and Comment for the chance of winning something like a phone or a voucher, Aldi is making their posts highly visible and engaging on social. The numbers prove that it works.

Here’s their top post of all time with more than 30k likes and 5.5k shares.

Who is the most Chatty?

1. Tesco – Talked with 46,354 people.

2. Sainsbury’s – Talked with 22,248 people.

3. Waitrose – Talked with 10,307 people.

Ok, this one is astonishing: Tesco tweets 647 times per DAY.

Their bio claims they are #HappyToHelp and oh, they surely are. Tesco is a great example of making customer care and support part of the brand social identity. Their activity stats are amazing, far beyond any other competing retailers.

One of their most popular tweets of all time is actually a reply to a twitter user:

Who’s got the Most Influential Audience?

1. The Co-operative Food (14% Power-users, 1% Celebrity-level)

2. Waitrose – 13% Power Users

3. Ocado – 13% Power Users

Influential audience is an important asset for content amplification. The power-users reaction to the brand’s content, like share and comments, can engage more users and help spread the content. The Co-operative Food wins the title here with 14% power users (and 1% of celebrity-level users).

One of their most famous follower is the heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield. We would be happy to bump into him in the aisles of the Co-op.

Who is the Most Creative?

1. Lidl

2. Tesco

3. Iceland Foods

Everyone with a phone and an Instagram account is a professional food photographer. When you are a store that sells food you need to come up with something more creative than that. We found that something at Lidl.

Their creative is clean, funny and not over-promoting. Lidl creates entertainment with food. What’s better than that?

The Best UK Supermarket on Social is

Tesco.

Tesco is not only the no.1 in market share, but also on social performance. Their social media approach is something to be taught at brands school. They take personal care for every question and mention by their customers. They share beautiful and creative content that enjoys high rates of likes and shares. All these together position Tesco at the first place among the UK supermarkets. Their competitors can take a look at Tesco’s performance and maybe learn how to stay at the top even on hard times.

About Yuval Maoz

One thought on “We Found the Most Creative, Chatty, Friendly Supermarkets in the UK”

Spot on! Tesco is a popular supermarket and the people are really friendly. Lived in the UK many years and it was at TESCO loads of ladies and gents helped me to navigate type of washing powder to mention a few. Congratulations.